For anyone to think that basketball in the first week of January will be perfect, crisp and wonderful have another thing coming. The problem is that teams are finding their way back to normal as they begin the grind of the following month leading up to the postseason.

Flanagan-Cornell-Woodland was able to work out the shooting kinks well enough Thursday for a 46-34 Heart of Illinois Conference girls basketball victory over host Lexington.

“We had a lot of good looks at the basket but missed a lot of layups,” FCW head coach Ron Spencer said. “We had a chance to open it up, but (LHS head coach) Jonathan (Williams) always keeps it close. They just keep coming and coming.”

The Falcons scored a minute into the game when Josie Walker tallied her first field goal. FCW had the lead the rest of the night.

But the visitors were challenged throughout despite slowly building up a double-digit lead.

Walker made two free throws for a 4-0 lead before Tessa Walcott buried a 3-pointer to get the Minutemen on the board with 2:24 to go in the opening frame.

Sydney Walker collected a 3-pointer and a three-point play as the FCW lead grew to 10-3. The margin was cut to 10-7 by the end of the quarter.

Despite the closeness, there was a major problem for both sides — shooting. Neither team shot the ball well and the battles for the rebounds were tough contests underneath.

For the Falcons, missing shots was bad enough. But the rebounding aspect proved difficult, as well.

“We didn’t do a good job of boxing out,” Spencer said. “We’re not very big and we have to do a better job of boxing out. When we do that, we can get down the floor.”

Transition is the name of the game for FCW. Lexington’s work on the glass helped limit those opportunities.

But the Minutemen were finding it more difficult to get the ball through the basket, even though Williams was happy to see a higher total at the end.

“The good thing was we scored 34 points,” Williams said. “We were struggling (before). We had opportunities but offensively we struggled so hard.”

Although it was much too little and quite too late, Lexington did find success at times in a set half-court offense. In what almost looked like textbook sets, the Minutemen were able to get the ball to Erica Davis in the low post for a couple of good shots off the glass.

Page 2 of 2 - Davis finished with a game-high 15 points. Of those, 10 came in the final frame, which was the only quarter Lexington outscored FCW.

“We’ve been trying that for weeks and we were finally able to accomplish that,” Williams said. “We did a lot of good things, we did more good things than we have for some time.”

FCW was able to expand its 10-7 lead after one period to 22-10 by halftime. It was a 32-18 difference after three quarters.